Content area
Full text
Abstract:
Foreign Invested Enterprises (FIEs) have been playing an important role in the fast developing Chinese economy, but there is a growing need to improve awareness and effective communication between responsible FIEs and stakeholders in China. On the one hand, FIEs' stakeholders in China need ready access to relevant information on which to judge the social performance of individual FIEs in China; on the other, FIEs need additional insight into Chinese stakeholder concerns and expectations in order to better localize their CSR strategies and improve the impact and visibility of their CSR programs. This article, based on the results of international and domestic research on CSR, probes into the CSR criteria and guidelines for FIEs in China, and seeks to finally establish a feasible assessment system for later research and FIE sustainability auditing program in China.
Keywords: CSR assessment model, stakeholder, foreign invested enterprises, Chinese context
Introduction
By the end of 2008, there were 434,900 registered foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) in China (including 146,900 affiliated agencies). The total registered capital has reached USD 1,300 billion with total investment of USD 2,320 billion (The National Bureau of Statistics, 2009). As of the first half of 2002, most of the World's Top 500 companies have established businesses in China with 3,096 projects, except for certain companies restricting investment from certain industries by Chinese regulations. Generally speaking, before 2009 the FIEs enjoyed fast and steady growth in China. Foreign investment has brought advanced manufacturing technologies and management know-how to China, which has helped in improving the domestic industrial structure, enhanced the quality of China's economic development, mitigated the pressures of the job market, and contributed to China's tax revenue. Meanwhile, FIEs have obtained global competitiveness with low-cost labor, local management talents and preferential policies specially offered to FIEs in China.
However, after the experience of the global economic recession in 2009, China has witnessed a decrease in foreign direct investment and a restructuring of FIEs (The Ministry of Commerce, 2009). The new challenges make it necessary for businesses worldwide to "fulfill the totality of its corporate social responsibility" (Cartoli, 1998) and "develop processes that involve the organization's stakeholders and that create organizational conditions for self-generation, creativity, resilience and action planning" (Elizabeth, James & Kathryn, 2010). Chinese...